[Footnote 1: "For of physical and ethical science, no less than of
mathematics and the common round of learning, as well as concerning
arts, he possessed full knowledge and experience."]


I was spending the Spring at Sienna. Occupied all day long with
meticulous researches among the city archives, I used after supper to
take an evening walk along the wild road leading to Monte Oliveto, where
I would encounter in the twilight huge white oxen under ponderous yokes
dragging a rustic wain with wheels of solid timber--all unchanged since
the times of old Evander. The church bells knelled the peaceful ending
of the day, while the purple shades of night descended sadly and
majestically on the low chain of neighbouring hills. The black squadrons
of the rooks had already sought their nests about the city walls, but
relieved against the opalescent sky a single sparrow-hawk still hung
floating with motionless wings above a solitary ilex tree.

I moved forward to confront the silence and solitude and the mild
terrors that lowered before me in the growing dusk. The tide of darkness
rose by imperceptible degrees and drowned the landscape. The infinite of
starry eyes winked in the sky, while in the gloom below the fireflies
spangled the bushes with their trembling love-lights.

These living sparks cover all the Roman Campagna and the plains of
Umbria and Tuscany, on May nights. I had watched them in former days on
the Appian Way, round the tomb of Cæcilia Metella--their playground for
two thousand years; now I found them dancing the selfsame dance in the
land of St. Catherine and of Pia de' Tolomei, at the gates of Sienna,
that most melancholy and most fascinating of cities. All along my path